Website

E-mail

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The Learning Centre

Telephone

24 Hour Information Line

0161 832 2244

Group Bookings

0161 606 0177

School Bookings

0161 833 0027

Fax

Marketing

0161 833 1471

Schools Bookings

0161 832 1511

All information is drawn from or provided by the venues themselves and every effort is made to ensure it is correct. Please remember to double check opening hours with the venue concerned before making a special visit.

Uncover Manchester's industrial past and learn about the fascinating stories of the people who contributed to the history and science of a city that helped shape the modern world. Located on the site of the world's oldest surviving passenger railway station and only minutes from Manchester's City Centre, the Museum's action-packed galleries, working exhibits and costumed characters tell the amazing story of revolutionary discoveries and remarkable inventions both past and present - a memorable day out for everyone!

The entire collection of this museum is a Designated Collection of national importance.

Venue Type:

Museum

Opening hours

Open daily 10.00-17.00

Closed 24-26 December and 1 January

Admission charges

Admission to the Museum's permanent galleries is FREE.Charges apply for Special Exhibitions.

Discounts

Museums Association

Additional info

Wheelchair access to 98% of the Museum. A loan service is available for Wheelchairs, Mobility Seats, Magnifiers and Water Bowls. (£20 returnable deposit). Handling sessions can be organised for partially sighted and blind visitors. 10 minute pre-sessions are available for most events. For further details, please call 0161 606 0156.

Our collections are Designated by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council as being 'pre-eminent collections of national and international importance'. We also provide access to about a third of our reserve collections through our on-site Collections Centre.

This museum's Designated collections are highly focused on the science and industry of the North West and, as a result of the region's pre-eminent role in industrial history, are often of national and international significance. The wealth of archival material is particularly significant. For example, the electricity industry collections illustrating the context, development and impact of electricity on people's lives, are underpinned by the records for the industry donated by the Electricity Council in 1986. The museum has been recognised with numerous awards for the restoration and interpretation of its historic site, Liverpool Road Station, which is the oldest railway station in the world.

The Museum uses its collections to tell the story of Manchester as the world’s first industrial city. We mainly collect objects that were made or used in the Manchester area. We also hold archives relating to people and companies from the region. We collect items from the present, as well as the past, in order to portray Manchester’s continuing story.

Collection details

Key artists and exhibits

Designated Collection

Exhibition details are listed below, you may need to scroll down to see them all.

Exhibition (temporary)

3D: Printing the Future

23 October 2014 — 19 April 2015 *on now

From printed knickers and a synthetic heart, to 3D printed pills and skull scaffolds, discover how 3D printing is about to change your life. 3D: Printing the Future brings together hundreds of 3D printed objects, celebrating the creativity and exploring the potential of this groundbreaking technology.

On public display for the first time will be a prototype radar scanner designed to detect 3D printed weapons, and the world’s first fully 3D printed bike frame.

Suitable for

Admission

Website

Experiment!

Stare into the mirror of infinity, spin the turbulence zone, or watch your own skeleton ride a bike.

Some of the most amazing facts about science in everyday life are explained in this fascinating interactive science gallery, where you are encouraged to see, hear, feel and smell science in action.

The new Experiment! includes old favourites such as the Mini, which can be lifted by a small child thanks to the simple power of gears, and the tornado machine, as well as up to 20 innovative new interactives.

Be mesmerised by bubbles passing through giant columns of coloured liquids to demonstrate viscosity, see how many of the city's homes can be lit by using rubbish as power, and measure your reactions against the speed of light or the flapping of a fly's wings.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Underground Manchester Gallery

1 November 2014 — 1 November 2018 *on now

Go underground to find out why clean water and effective sewerage were vital to public health and Manchester's development. Located in the cellars of the Station Building, this gallery tells the story of Manchester's water supply and sanitation from Roman times to the present day. Outside the Station Building, look out for the massive valve that controlled water flow along the Thirlmere Aqueduct, which still brings water to Manchester from the Lake District.

Walk through a Victorian sewer, built using original bricks from a Manchester sewer of the late 1830s. Explore the history of the toilet through exhibits including a real Victorian privy (earth closet) and a tippler toilet featuring an unusual flushing system. A recreation of the laundry at Moss Street Public Baths, Bolton, takes you back to the age of steam laundry.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Revolution Manchester Gallery

1 November 2014 — 1 November 2018 *on now

MOSI's newest gallery opened to the public on 29 January 2011. This gallery serves as an introduction to MOSI's subject themes, galleries and collections - and also highlights other heritage venues in the NW. It provides an overview of Manchester's rich legacy of world-changing industrial innovations and scientific discoveries.

A huge, eye-catching digital sculpture forms the Gallery's attractor exhibit. By registering a bar-code card, visitors can watch their photos travel back in time up the sculpture, past faces and places linked to significant Manchester achievements. The bar-code card also activates a series of games and challenges, creating a log that can be viewed on a personal web page.

The Gallery is divided into six sections: Transport Revolutions, Computer Age, Engineering, Energy, Cottonopolis and Structure of Matter. Each section tells a story running from the past to the future. Links between Revolution Manchester and our other galleries are shown on a vast 50-screen media wall.

Website

The Making of Manchester Gallery

Relive the Peterloo Massacre and explore other major events in Manchester’s history in this gallery. The Making of Manchester tells the story of Manchester from Roman Times to the present day.

Exhibits range from the personal to the ceremonial and from the ordinary to the extraordinary. Manchester kept a medieval form of local government until 1838, illustrated here by standard weights and measures used by Manor of Manchester inspectors to check market trade.

Given city status in 1853, Manchester developed a strong sense of civic pride. You can see unique items relating to the Manchester Ship Canal, one of the great British civil engineering achievements of the nineteenth century. The city's recent history is represented by a traffic light from the Market Street-Cross Street junction, damaged by the blast from the bomb planted by the IRA in 1996.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Gas Gallery

1 November 2014 — 1 November 2018 *on now

Trace the story of gas supply and discover how coal was turned into gas. Built in 1817, Manchester's first gasworks stood on nearby Water Street. Gas street lamps, like those lighting the Gas Gallery entrance area, were brighter than oil lamps and made the streets safer. You can walk through the recreated retort house of a town gasworks.

Find out how gas cookers and heaters have changed over the years. One of the exhibits that might surprise you is a gas hair dryer used in a Blackpool hairdressing salon. Our gas showroom shows you the choice and cost of appliances that were available in the 1920s.

Meet an 'intelligent pig', a remote-controlled device for checking the pipelines that bring North Sea gas to land. The discovery of natural gas under the North Sea in the 1960s gave us the cleaner, cheaper gas that we use today.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Connecting Manchester Gallery

1 November 2014 — 1 November 2018 *on now

Has your life been changed by email or the mobile phone? Is the paperless office really feasible? The Connecting Manchester Gallery tells the story of the development of communications in the Manchester region. It looks at how the new technologies of their day made it possible for people to communicate faster and further.

The Gallery draws on a wide range of the Museum's collections, including printing and papermaking machinery, photographic equipment, telephony and telegraphy equipment, radios, televisions, computers and other digital equipment.

Highlights include the first British model of Linotype machine, which revolutionised newspaper production, and early telephones made by David Moseley & Sons of Manchester. Among the more familiar objects on display are classic radios, such as the Ferranti Lancastria, and a 'Space Age' Keracolor television.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Textiles Gallery

1 November 2014 — 1 November 2018 *on now

Working machinery, hands-on exhibits, artworks and human stories bring to life the story of Manchester's textile industry. Explore the properties of different fibres and fabrics, and try out processes such as braiding and weaving. A merchant's office gives a sense of what it was like to sell the cotton goods that made Manchester famous worldwide. You can examine samples of fabrics made in Manchester for export to West Africa.

Watch yarn being spun and turned into cloth while our Explainers show you what's happening and what mill work was like. Several of the working machines were made by Platt Bros. of Oldham, once the world's leading manufacturer of textile machinery. Follow the production process through the finishing stages of design, dyeing, printing and making-up to the afterlife of textile recycling. Artworks feature throughout the gallery, adding colour, insight and surprise.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Power Hall

1 November 2014 — 1 November 2018 *on now

Steam power was vital to Manchester's industrial development. The Power Hall houses one of the largest collections of working steam mill engines in the world. The engines include a beam engine used at Haydock Colliery and the impressive 1907 McNaught engine from Firgrove Mill.

The Power Hall also contains working examples of gas, oil, hot-air and diesel engines. These were made by local companies such as Crossley Brothers and the National Gas Engine Co. Ltd. The two newest exhibits are a Galloways pumping engine and a towering 30-tonne hydraulic accumulator.

The former railway transit shed provides a fitting setting for locomotives and rolling stock. Get close up to a replica of Novelty, which ran in the famous 1829 Rainhill Trials. Nearby is the Beyer-Garratt articulated steam locomotive, the largest exhibit in the Power Hall. Made at Beyer, Peacock's Gorton factory in 1930, this Garratt ran on the South African Railways until 1972.

Suitable for

Website

Electricity Gallery

1 November 2014 — 1 November 2018 *on now

The Electricity Gallery lets you peer into the past of the technology that changed our lives. Learn about the principles of electricity and look at early electric machines, such as electric shock machines used in medical treatment.

Recreated kitchens and living rooms of the 1930s and 1950s show how electricity tranformed our homes. The Gallery's central feature is an English Electric turbo-generator, installed in Bolton's Back o' th' Bank Power Station in 1923. On the top floor, Energy for the Future explores the pros and cons of nuclear power and renewable sources of energy.

You will also find displays about Manchester's vital role in computer development. See half of the world's most powerful calculating machine of 1935. It was designed by Douglas Hartree at the University of Manchester and made by Metropolitan-Vickers in Trafford Park. Another large exhibit is the Pegasus 1 mainframe computer, made in 1957 by Ferranti Ltd in West Gorton.

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Air & Space Gallery

1 November 2014 — 1 November 2018 *on now

Pride of place in this gallery goes to aircraft built by A. V. Roe & Co. Ltd (Avro), founded in Manchester by Alliott Verdon Roe in 1910. Look back to the early days of flying machines when Roe made the first flight by a British aircraft with a British engine in his Triplane 1.

Our triplane is a 50-year-old replica of Roe's aeroplane. The 1954 Avro Shackleton, built at Woodford, near Stockport, was designed to locate and attack submarines and for search and rescue. It could fly for up to 24 hours.

Royal Ruby motorcycle and sidecar You can also discover the links between car and aircraft production in Manchester. See the 1923 Harper Runabout, made in the Avro aircraft factory. The displays also include a Rolls-Royce car, hand-built in Hulme in 1905, and a 1912 Ford Model T car, assembled at Trafford Park, the first Ford factory outside North America. You can see motorbikes too - find out what links the 1916 Royal Ruby motorbike and the Russian Revolution!

Suitable for

Family friendly

Website

Wellcome Image Awards 2015

19 March 2015

For the second year running, the Museum of Science & Industry is delighted to be one of just a handful of UK science centres and venues selected by the Wellcome Trust, to exhibit the winning entries in the prestigious and coveted Wellcome Image Awards. Showcasing the best in science imaging talent and techniques, these 20 brand new and award winning images go on display later this month in the stunning surrounds of the museum’s original and oldest surviving First Class Booking Hall.

Amongst this year’s crop of award-winning entries is the image of an interactive multi-sensory unit designed to provide a distraction for anxious children undergoing serious hospital procedures. The paediatric sensory unit - approximately 5 ft tall and inclusive of a bubble tube, fibre optic lights, mirrors, a solar projector and the capability of producing sound – was captured by Central Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s Operational Service Manager for Clinical Photography and Medical Illustration, Geraldine Thompson. She is also one of 1200 STEM Ambassadors associated with the museum, helping to inspire young people across greater Manchester about science, technology, engineering and maths.

Suitable for

Exhibition (temporary)

The Innovation Race: Manchester’s Makers Join the First World War

28 March 2015 — 1 April 2016

It’s 1915. Britain is one year into the First World War and facing a munitions crisis. Victory looks increasingly unlikely. Morale is at an all-time low. The government establishes the Ministry of Munitions in a desperate response to the shell crisis and appoints David Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions. In a subsequent visit to Manchester, he appeals to the city’s great scientific and engineering minds for help. The innovation race is on.

Suitable for

Website

Let's Talk About Sex

Why do we get jealous? Does love exist? Why do we fancy people? Forget about matters of the heart. This is science.

Join us for a night of all things biological, from tongue-tingling aphrodisiacs and sensual sexperiments to scientific speed-dating and a glimpse of the science behind sex.

Talk with sexologists, indulge in the Science of Sex show, create your own piece of sexy screen printed art and discover what foods can turn you on. Come along for some speed dating, but not as you know it. Although we can't reveal the exact details of this experiment, you can combine romance with research in this one-of-a-kind speed dating night. It's fast, fun and you might just find love...

After the speed dating you can join in with our seriously sexy science events and have a drink or two at the bar.

Suitable for

Admission

Website

Solar Eclipse at Pi: Platform for Investigation

21 March 2015 10:30am-3:30pm

Don't be in the dark about the solar eclipse. Let Manchester Astronomical Society and The University of Manchester’s School of Earth, Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences reveal the secrets of the solar system at Pi: Platform for Investigation.To celebrate one of the most amazing events of the celestial calendar, we've invited astronomers and star gazers to host a day of all things space. Budding Chris Hadfields and Brian Coxes can discover more about our solar system and its place in the universe.

Pi: Platform for Investigation showcases cutting edge science up close and offers visitors of all ages the unique opportunity to explore - for free - the wonders of science creatively and in the company of leading researchers and scientists.

Constructive Criticism History Guided Tour

What can we learn from historic buildings? How do we use buildings as evidence? An Education Officer will lead your group on a guided tour around MoSI's unique buildings, including the Grade 1 listed 1830 Warehouse and 1830 Station Building. A great opportunity to take sourcework out of the classroom. Add a session with an archivist in the Collections Centre looking at primary evidence for an additional cost of £1.00 per pupil.

How to obtain

History guided tours cost £3.00 per pupil (Minimum group charge £45.00, although there is no minimum group charge for Special Needs groups. Tours are led by a Museum Education Officer and last 45 minutes. They are available all year round and can be booked for groups of up to 20 pupils for 9.45am, 11.00am, 12.15pm and 1.30pm. They can be adapted to meet the needs of different groups. (Contact the Learning Centre to discuss.)

Face to face resources

Engines at Work

Experience the sights, sounds and smells of real operational steam engines that powered mills all over the North West and helped to shape our world, in this daily demonstration of Engines at Work. Come along between 11.00-16.00.

How to obtain

This event is free and suitable for all ages.

Face to face resources

Manchester Mills

Follow the thread of Manchester's cotton industry as Museum of Science and Industry Presenters take you on a whistle-stop tour of how cotton is processed from its raw state to the finished product - a piece of calico cloth. Go back in time to the working mills of 150 years ago and experience the deafening sounds of the mill machines. Find out how the machines changed peoples' lives and listen to the stories of what life was like for thousands of mill workers. Some of our Presenters have first-hand experience of working in a textile mill. Learn about the working conditions, when respiratory diseases were rife and children as young as five were employed to sweep under these dangerous machines.

How to obtain

Demonstrations are free, just turn up at the start time. Email marketing@mosi.org.uk for more event details.

Face to face resources

Revulsion to Reform History Guided Tour

Why were living and working conditions in 18th and 19th century Manchester so bad? What did people do to improve conditions for the working class? Explore these issues and more on a guided tour of MoSI's Making of Manchester and Underground Manchester galleries. Ideal for both Key Stage 3 and Medicine Through Time GCSE.

How to obtain

History guided tours cost £3.00 per pupil (Minimum group charge £45.00, although there is no minimum group charge for Special Needs groups. Tours are led by a Museum Education Officer and last 45 minutes. They are available all year round and can be booked for groups of up to 20 pupils for 9.45am, 11.00am, 12.15pm and 1.30pm. They can be adapted to meet the needs of different groups. (Contact the Learning Centre to discuss.)

Face to face resources

Storytime

Go along to Museum of Science and Industry's monthly weekend storytime sessions for under 5s. Each month we will read stories and poems and sing songs all for free. Join in between 10.00 and 10.50 on weekends and in school holidays.

How to obtain

No need to book, free sessions. Contact marketing@mosi.org.uk for more information.

Face to face resources

Xperitots

These popular activity sessions for under 4s and their carers take place in Museum of Science and Industry's hands-on science gallery, Xperiment, with a different topic each month. Fun, creative activities, puppets and storytelling help toddlers get the most out of this gallery. Join in from 10.00-11.30, on the 1st Wednesday of the month.

How to obtain

Booking is essential. Please ring and reserve your place on 0161 833 0027 or 0161 606 0156. Tickets are £1.00 per child. A group booking form must be completed for groups of ten or more.

Charles Darwin's notebooks, Patrick Moore's BBC scripts and David Livingstone's African beetles were a few of the big science stories covered by Culture24 this year. From Russian mammoths to dinosaurs, take a look back here.